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It is still raining endlessly here in Seattle, but at least we’re not getting buried by mudslides like parts of California! Speaking of the Golden State, we’re headed down to Los Angeles in late January for a one-day Religion Newswriters Association meeting at USC and for a Media Project meeting to discuss the GetReligion blog I write for. It’s the first time since I’ve worked there that we’re all going to meet together, so am looking forward to that. So if anyone Down There wants to see us, we’re in town the last week of January. Disneyland is certainly on the itinerary one of those days and we may take a look at Knotts Berry Farm, which I’ve never seen.

The parliament building in Victoria at night.

Christmas, by the way, was very quiet. We spent time with my mother and sister-in-law Susan. Just before that, Veeka and I did an overnight to Victoria, doing a walk-on to the ferry and seeing the Christmas lights at Butchart Gardens. We had a lovely time visiting bookstores in Victoria and Chinatown. Unfortunately it rained the whole time! But it was lovely seeing the Parliament building outlined in Christmas lights. Planning continues for my visit to Iceland and the sponsors ran an interview with me here.
. I snagged a ticket that my Alaska Airlines miles paid for, so that’s one huge expense I don’t have to bear. I’m putting together a list of all I want to do there, so am reading delicious articles like this one on Reykjavik bakeries. (Who knew?
It’s a slow time of year; a good thing that allows me to catch up on things. I’m waiting for reviews of my book to come out and thus far, only the Nashville Tennesseanhas written it up. However, the book’s release came a month late, so it’s no wonder reception has been slow.
A few more things: Did you know that it costs a minimum of $76,000, according to this article, to live in Seattle? .
Believe me, most of the people I know are making a lot less than that. House prices in Seattle have risen 53 percent in the past four years. The country’s fastest-growing housing markets are Portland, Seattle and Denver. This article says Seattle/Portland home prices have risen at twice the national rate. I think the rest of the country has finally realized they want to live somewhere that’s beautiful so they’re all heading to Washington, Oregon or Colorado. Whenever I have neighbors over for dinner, house prices is about all we talk about and how impossible it will be for any of us to buy within 50 miles of Seattle. See this piece for what rents are expected to be east of Seattle (where I live) for 2018. It is still stupendous. So we won’t be buying any time soon unless we win the lottery!

A White House photo of Paula White with Melania and Donald Trump taken mid-2017.

The closing months of 2017 have been unexpectedly pleasant for me in that I finally sold my house, published my book, got a huge article in the Washington Post Sunday magazine about Paula White (President Trump’s spiritual advisor) and won a contest for a trip to Iceland. I was long overdue for some good things to come my way.
About the Iceland trip: I’d seen this ad about a swishy retreat for writers in downtown Reykjavik and I was dying to go. I’d visited Iceland twice: In 1997 and 2001, but other trips and adopting Veeka made it tough to go back in recent years. Plus, the country itself has undergone a huge tourism boom in that the island’s population triples each summer with all the visitors.
But this retreat, situated at a nice hotel near the municipal airport, seemed so lovely with interesting speakers and an international clientele. Only a handful of people were going to get scholarships to go and I wanted to be one of those people. And the timing is during Veeka’s spring break, making it easy for someone to take care of her while I’m gone. So, I applied, sketching out my writing experience; why I – as a single parent – was more than ready for some time to myself; my financial needs; all about my interest in Iceland; why I wanted to hear the speakers who were showing up for the retreat and my personal writing history plus how I have a manuscript for young adult readers that I’ve been trying to get out the door for years but haven’t had the time to do that final push. I also got a good friend from my getreligion blog and a Washington Post editor to write the recommendations.
I also knew the odds were against me. I was much older and I was sure any help would go to younger applicants, so I asked for a partial scholarship, figuring I had a better chance than asking for everything to be paid. It turned out that more than 700 people from multiple countries applied. They chose four.

Veeka displaying the lovely cover of my new book.

Thus, on Dec. 2, I saw an email that looked innocuous but was an announcement that I was one of two people given a partial scholarship. The announcement, which ran Dec. 4, showed photos of the four of us. I am beyond delighted. I’d gotten a hunch that 2018 was the year I might begin traveling again and this will be a great start. And arrangements for Veeka’s care during that week are coming together as well.
Veeka, for her part, was promoted up to middle school level in late November, which made for much rejoicing on her part, as she was more than ready to move out of her present class. In her new class, she is learning some German along with everything else, so we are practicing simple sentences at home.
Then on Nov. 14, my long-awaited, nearly 6,000-word piece on Paula White came out in the Post’s online editions with the print edition out on the 19th. I got some very nice reaction from lots of folks, as no one else had published anything like it elsewhere. I’d worked so hard on it over the months and gone through so many drafts. My fellow getreligion bloggers nicely wrote it up here and I did a follow-up piece with more information on Paula here. I won’t go into a full recital of all the behind-the-scenes drama that accompanied it, but let’s say it was a piece that got passed around lots of people at the Post before it ran. I wish I could have gotten some quotes out of Trump himself for the piece, but that was not to be, even though I contacted the White House to ask if that was possible.

Veeka practicing her preaching skills.

One of the people most affected by that article was Veeka, who was entranced by the thought of women preaching and pastoring. She decided God had called her to preach or lead worship, so she set up a music stand in our living room, grabbed a toy mic that we had and loaded a bunch of Bibles and other notes on the stand to help her preach. I put on some Paula videos to inspire her. We’re attending a new Bible study just south of us on Monday nights where she likes to watch, then copy the adults as they pray for people. Although it’s been hard to get to know people at our church, I made some progress to that end this fall, when we attended Thanksgiving at the home of one of the families we’ve gotten to know. They live way out in the foothills of the Cascades beyond a town called Carnation. I signed up to be part of a welcoming crew on Sunday mornings. Seattle is a little less strange and lonely.

I spoke Dec. 7 at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park near Seattle.

So, November was a good month. Other stuff that got published included my piece in ParentMap about skiing at Vancouver’s Mount Washington ski area last February. We traveled very little this fall, instead staying home to do things like make brandied fruit for Christmas and viewing a jag of sand-and-sandal movies like “Ben Hur,” “The Robe,” and a bunch of life-of-Christ epics and Christian movies like “I am Not Ashamed” (the story of Columbine martyr Rachel Scott; “To Save a Life” which we really liked; “God’s Not Dead” #1+2 and “The Hiding Place,” which introduced Veeka to the concept of the Holocaust for the first time.
And we’ve been branching out in the Japanese anime world, having already watched every Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film in existence. We’ve been making our way through works by Makato Skinkai, which are almost as good. The other day I won a Fandango movie gift card for $40, which means we’ll be going to see “The Last Jedi” pretty soon as well.
And I’ve started doing booksignings. The one at Third Place Books went OK – the Seattle traffic that night made the roads horrific and even I was almost late in getting there. About 10-12 folks listened in and fortunately my Powerpoint worked well. More signings are scheduled in the coming months (will be posting those on my blog under a new ‘book signings’ tab) and I’m hoping for some good reviews. Have had no luck in getting on radio, but someone did contact me to ask for movie rights. That will be the day!

It took 2 months but a couple bought it and I couldn’t be happier. I was told they both attended Union University at one point (where I taught for a year), which was kind of nice. Hated to let it go, but it was time.

Once again, I’ve realized that I’ve let months go by without blogging, so I’ll try to make up for it with a l-o-n-g entry. The big news in my life is I finally SOLD my house in Tennessee; my serpent handlers book release date is coming up this month as review copies are being sent out this week and pre-orders will be filled the following week. And my epic Washington Post piece on Paula White comes out Nov. 19. It should go online the evening of the 16th and I’ll send out a more detailed blog in a few days telling about what it was like to research it.

The serpents book was actually due out Nov. 6, but some delays on the publishing end pushed things back a bit. But I am already lining up book signings, especially in the Pacific Northwest although I am open to traveling elsewhere. If anyone wants to help me promote this through Tweets, etc., let me know!

To go back a bit and review, Veeka had the last week of August off, so I decided to stay local. We borrowed a tent from the local Girl Scouts office (as a member, Veeka gets this for nothing) and packed that plus some inflatable mattresses we’d gotten from her previous troop into the car and headed for Lake Chelan State Park in central Washington. Once there, I was racing to get the 4-person tent up before dark, but finally had to beg for help from a passerby. We were right on the lake, which was pleasant but camping on the sand made us constantly dirty.
So the following day we repaired to Slidewaters, a local waterpark which was quite charming and not near as crowded as its Seattle-area counterparts. Before jumping into the water, we

Veeka chilling in front of the old Stehekin school house about 3 miles from the lodge. I was amazed how nothing in that village seems to have locks.

had an immense breakfast at Blueberry Hills Farms across the lake in nearby Manson, an area I’d never seen before. We also got to drop by two wineries. Fortunately the local wine places “only” charge $5 tasting fees, unlike outlets east of Seattle that charge a whopping $20. I found a nice Gewurztraminer at Mellisoni Vineyards and had a nice visit to Karma Vineyards as well, where they had a lovely patio area and didn’t charge us a thing.

On our third day, we caught an early morning ferry to Stehekin, a village some 25 miles up the lake that can only be reached by boat, barge or plane. We settled in at the lodge and enjoyed our next two days of biking and poking about. There were a lot of Europeans there; folks who had dropped in from the Pacific Crest Trail (which was 8 miles to the west) for a good night’s sleep in a bed. I asked several of them why they chose to come here when they had the Swiss Alps over there. Everyone told me that it’s impossible to be alone in the Alps, as there’s homes everywhere you look and no solitude. Whereas the PCT is very much about solitude.

Christina and her grandmother (my mom) at her Oct. 28 wedding in Portland.

We wandered about a beautiful historic apple orchard, hiked to a waterfall, visited a huge vegetable garden and an amazing bakery, swam in some very chilly water and explored the local school house. The bulletin board by the post office is fun to read if for no other reason that it gives you a glimpse of the folks who live in the area. And the post office was piled high with care packages for all the hikers.
And the hiking register, also in the post office, is filled with signatures of hikers from all over the world. People sign with their trail names, like “Locomotive” or “Bronco.” One wrote:

Roses are red My body is dirty That 15 miles Sure felt like 30.

The Stehekin Lodge, where we stayed 2 nights, is the most relaxing place to spend a sunny afternoon.

After that, Veeka started school again and then I had a long-planned business trip to Nashville as I was part of the organizing committee for the annual conference of the Religion News Association, a gathering of journalists whose primary beat is religion. We flew there Sept. 6. It was simply haunting to be back in Tennessee.

The landscape was so green-and-rolling-hills when we landed and the temps were in the 70s, breezy and delightful. We stayed at the Gaylord Opry Hotel, which has a vast indoor garden with bridges, moats, varied-color lights, giant palm trees and the sound of water falls everywhere. It took awhile to find our room and way around, as the place was a gigantic maze plus we had to park far away to escape the $29/day lot fee.

Then we met an old friend from Union University days downtown at The Southern, a downtown lovely restaurant that served up raw oysters, fish w/grits, Thai tacos and sweet tea. Hearing the southern accents, driving I-40 through town, dropping by the Opryland Mall all brought back 3-year-old memories of our sojourn there from 2012-2014. All of which were made sweeter by texts from my real estate guy in Jackson informing me he’d found a buyer for my home and that documents awaited me to sign. Evicting my former tenant and sinking $6,000+ into cleaning the place has been SUCH a long haul in recent months so I was grateful there was light at the end of my tunnel.

Biking on the road from Stehekin nine miles to the Pacific Crest Trail trailhead, one found cute roadside objects like this.

On Sept. 7, I drove back to Jackson where Veeka was going to stay with her old friend Ava while I attended the conference. It was such a day of reliving memories. The 2-hour drive to Jackson, with the stop at Loretta Lynn’s restaurant (exit 143); the places for cheap gas (exists 126 and 108); the arrival into Jackson off exits 80 and 82; visiting Union University with the huge domed library that dominates the entire campus. I found it odd the president and provost have their offices on the third floor, which must make it inconvenient for other staff to get to them.

Then there was the new coffee bar in the campus library that was charming and driving about the campus itself, which was pretty much the same as when I worked there. Driving up the 45 bypass, I visited Alan Castleman, my real estate agent who had found me some good buyers. I left him a candy box of applets and cotlets in gratitude. For those of you not from the Pacific Northwest, that’s kind of like the official candy of Washington state.

Driving down Old Humboldt Road to our old house, we drove past cotton fields that I hadn’t seen in years. Our development, Shepherd’s Field has been dramatically expanded to the north with all new homes. When I got to my house and got inside, it didn’t look as fresh as I had left it three years ago. It took months to get the tenant out and I invested a lot in getting the place cleaned, re-painted and new carpet installed to attract buyers. Fortunately, Celeste, a friend from my old church, came by and planted some new flowers to spruce up the place, so I am very grateful to her and to Randall Cox, the yard care man who helped me get some improvements done long distance. I also retained a good agent and it paid off. The closing date was Oct. 31. Yes!

I drove back to Nashville in a fog but had a lovely time at Cochon Butcher, a mostly outdoors restaurant in the Germantown section of town that had cunningly assembled pork dishes and some real creative treatments of vegetables, ie the sweet pickles I tried. The person I met there was Langley Granbery, an old friend from Trinity days. So much water had gone under the bridge since our families had last met 2013, so we had a lot of catching up to do. He and Lois have 5 successful and smart children. They live in a lovely house south of town.

Me and James Goll on my revivalists panel. Photo by Joe Schiska courtesy of the RNA.

Then it was back to the Gaylord, where I was on the organizing committee for this conference. It’d been awhile since I’d been at an RNA event, chiefly because I was attending college journalism prof (AEJMC) conferences in recent years until my life as a professor came to an end when we moved to Seattle. One thing that made this conference touching was the presence of Jeff Weiss, a Dallas Morning News reporter who was dying of brain cancer. He got an award at the conference and I was told he would last until at least January, but he died three months early on Oct. 25. Did he have some help doing so? I don’t know, but I wrote this memorial post in his memory.

One of the most popular panels of the weekend was the one I put together on “the new revivalists,” about a movement among charismatic and Pentecostal Christians that some hate and others love. I wrote about it – in part – here last year and Christianity Today profiled one of its main leaders here but it’s a many-faceted tough movement to pin down. I felt that other journalists needed to know about this trend, so I put together this panel, which included James Goll, one of the masterminds behind the movement; Holly Pivec, who operates a blog that opposes this revivalist movement and

Paula White, President Trump’s spiritual advisor who has nothing to do with the movement but who I persuaded to come speak at the conference and this was the only panel she really fit into. James spoke at the Seattle-area church I currently attend and I had to do some wheedling among some folks to get access to him, but once I did, he agreed to come. It helped that he lives in Nashville. Holly attends my former church in Fairbanks, which I didn’t find out until after I’d moved to Seattle! So wish I’d known she was there, as I was so lonely that year we were in Alaska – I only had one friend there – but somehow we never crossed paths.

Anyway, another member of the panel had cancelled, so I contacted her on the off chance she’d want to fly to Nashville on her own dime, since the RNA doesn’t pay for speakers’ airfare. She agreed to do so and it was a good choice for her, because she got introduced to a lot of reporters in a very short time, as she had a very good presentation. I believe the panel (which I moderated) was the most-attended in the entire conference and reporters sure swarmed around Paula later to get quotes, so I considered it a success. You can listen to a video of the panel here. The rest of the conference went well enough, and afterwards I met with Allison Biggers at Loveless Cafe, a part-restaurant, part-tourist attraction west of Nashville. Lots of fun. Then I drove back to Jackson to pick up Veeka, say one last good-bye to the house, then head to Alabama to stay with Rebecca and Craig Hodge in Huntsville and zip down to Birmingham to see John Morgan, who provided many of the photos for the serpents book. Then over to east Tennessee to see Terry and Debra and Frye Mattingly and visit

It really is worth a visit.

the publisher of my book at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Also went out to lunch with John David Hatch, the photographer who provided the cover shot for the book. One place we dropped by in Scottsboro, Ala., on our way to Tennessee, is the Unclaimed Baggage warehouse, the one place in the nation where you can buy stuff from peoples’ lost luggage. I’d heard of the place but had never found the time to get there. It’s very much off the beaten track – about an hour east of Huntsville – but we had fun there and Veeka got some new black patent leather heels.

It did feel strange driving I-40 again, as I spent the better part of my two years in Tennessee criss-crossing the state on that road. Right after we got back, my niece Lindsay had her second child, a daughter, Madelyn Marie, on the 18th, keeping up with a family tradition of September birthdays. (She is Rob’s youngest daughter) And then another niece, Christina, (Steve’s oldest daughter) got married Oct. 28, which meant a trip to Portland for all of us. Fortunately, the weather that weekend was beyond fabulous, as it was awful the weekend before and the weekend after. Which puts 2017 in a much nicer light than 2016, when my dad and Lindsay’s maternal grandfather died. At least we added to the family this year instead of losing folks.

Lindsay and a sleepy Madelyn and Veeka at Christina’s wedding reception.

So now I’m in the midst of a PR blitz for my new book. I have an offer for readers of this blog: If you buy my book and can show me a receipt, I’ll send you a copy of my 2009 book: Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community for only $5 (which covers postage). Email me at jcduin@aol.com with a photo of the receipt. The publisher folks told me in Knoxville they had an unusually high number of pre-orders for the book, so they were upping their press run. Of course I’m hoping for some good reviews, as I don’t come out with books everyday. I am having a signing at 7 p.m. on Dec. 7 at Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way in Lake Forest Park, so if you live in the Seattle area and are reading this, please come. Am still putting together my presentation: Videos of snake handlers, maybe? Must say, every time I lecture on this, people are fascinated, even in a I-wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-at-one-of-these-services kind of way.

These are the dog days of summer, so named because the ancient Romans believed that the star Sirius (known as the “dog star” because it was the brightest in the constellation of Canis Major), actually radiated extra heat toward the Earth during the summer, when Sirius rises and sets with the sun.

Veeka had some time off in June, so she went to a local Bible camp, then enjoyed a soccer camp where she could bone up on the game before joining a league this fall. She did well. Meanwhile, over the Fourth of July weekend, we attended a family camp near Silverton, Oregon sponsored by Good Samaritan Ministries, a Beaverton-based charity that I’ve been connected with for years. The weather was decent and it was located in the woods near Silver Creek Falls State Park, a tourist draw in that area.

Right after that, we went to Breitenbush, an alternative resort that specializes in vegetarian food and hot springs located near Detroit Lakes, Oregon. Breitenbush is made up of scores of individual cabins near some rivers in the Oregon wilderness.

My budding soccer star

It’s a holistic retreat and conference center that’s pretty New Agey in a way but I must say I certainly gained no weight with their non-sugar, non-dairy cuisine. Veeka found a few friends there to play with in the tubs, which are clothing-optional, which was a bit odd. One was always trying to make fascinating conversation with the other people soaking away while trying to keep one’s eyes focused from the waist up. With me having gained lots of weight in recent years, I wasn’t too wild about appearing in the buff but just about everyone else did so. By this time, the weather had seriously warmed up, so it was delightful being in the mountains without simultaneously freezing to death.

The following weeks were filled with new stuff (to us) such as attending our first-ever Seattle Mariners game downtown, which was great fun in that the Mariners beat the Oakland A’s that time around. We spent a weekend camping out – with folks from our church – at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island and went harvesting mussels; a new experience. Basically, you stand in the cold water and scoop up loads of shells that are affixed to huge clumps of seaweed.

Otherwise this summer, we’ve been on a ton of hikes and trips to places like Guemes Island (in Puget Sound), Tipsoo Lake and Natches Peak (near Mt. Rainier), a Christian family conference at Warm Beach (north of Everett), Franklin Falls (near Snoqualmie Pass) and lots of other outings thanks to Seattle’s record-breaking rainless summer this year.From mid-June on, there was no rain in western Washington. Before that, there was nine months of continuous rain. We finally

Me at the summit of the Natches Peak loop hike with Mt. Rainier in the background. Gorgeous views and clear, fresh air.

We also had a quickie trip to Washington, DC at the end of July for a piece I’m doing for the Washington Post Sunday magazine that I’ll talk about closer to publication. Will say that Veeka (who I took with me) and I expected hot weather but we got three very cool days there. She and I stayed near our old place in Hyattsville and got to see several old friends. I was delighted to find that the photographer accompanying me on the assignment was none other than Mary Calvert, who I knew from Washington Times days and who’s now gone freelance. (Mary shot the photo of me in Lucknow, India that’s featured on this blog). It was very odd to be reporting again in downtown DC, which included my getting on the White House grounds for about two hours. I retired from full-time reporting seven years ago, thinking I would move seamlessly to a career as a college professor. Which worked out for a few years until all the jobs in my field dried up.

So I’ve been picking up gigs here and there and trying new ones, such as helping folks write books. Will say that a book that I’ve been editing along with Dr. Bob Eckert, who was one of the chief elders at Church of the Redeemer during the 1960s and 1970s, is now out and ready to order!

). I’m very happy about its release in July because we had a ton of delays in getting that project done. If you want a good read, please order “God’s Doctor: A Texas Physician and the Miracles of God.”

Veeka enjoying the Mariners game and, even more importantly, the blue cotton candy.

AND, my upcoming book is also available for pre-order on Amazon, so naturally I’m excited. Right now I’m editing page proofs and putting together an index for the book, all while I’m also putting together the aforementioned WaPo piece, which will be about 4,000 words. Nothing like three deadlines all on the same day.

about that. I’d love to say I could make a living writing full-time but I’ve not discovered how to do that as a freelancer. Speaking of freelancing, Veeka has started a small petsitting business and just got $50 from her first cat-sitting engagement. Housing prices are sky-high anywhere near Seattle, so every little bit helps. Other than that, I’ve been reading tons of books to Veeka, including another go at The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I read straight through. Starting in May, we began watching all the movies and appendices connected with LOTR, so everything was very Tolkienesque around our household for awhile. Then I moved on to Zenna Henderson’s “The People” stories and am now wrapping up Joy Chant’s “Red Moon, Black Mountain” one of the best sci-fi books ever. So wish Studio Ghibli (a Japanese studio) would pick it up for one of their movies! It’s got just the right mystical storyline for a Miyazaki film. Will say that Chant’s worldview is very Christian, so the showdown between Lucifer and the Archangel Michael near the end of the book is one of the best confrontations in all of literature.

These are the lovely days of early summer when the days are long and beautiful. We’ve had a run of lovely weather lately, so I took a dip and went kayaking Thursday in the local lake, courtesy of a long-time high school friend who has a home on Lake Sammamish. Last week, I took my mom and Veeka to Manzanita, Ore., where friend have a cottage they graciously let us rent cheaply. My mom hadn’t been to the beach in ages and certainly not to the Oregon coast in at least a decade. Our first day, we wandered about Cannon Beach, a nearby town that was packed with tourists there to see a sandcastle building contest. We wandered near Haystack Rock, a huge stone island in the surf.
The next day, we sat on the beach at Manzanita where it was sunny and then a fog bank rolled in. There was still some sunlight but huge drifts of white stuff passing by us, as the clouds had come down and seeing people wander about the beach mixed in fog and sun was like a Brigadoon stage set. Of course Veeka didn’t want to be more than 10 feet from the waves at any point of time. I always forget how lush and rain forest-like the coast is. On our way back, we had lunch with a friend of my mom’s in Astoria, a city I’d never been to in all my years in Oregon. Our restaurant was right at the mouth of the Columbia River, where huge barges floated on by.

With Manzanita behind her, Veeka runs toward the water while clouds fill the beach.

A number of things have happened since I last wrote, one being that I had another birthday. Just before that, I’d seen an essay by Anne Lamott, who is the same age as me, on her thoughts about turning 61. So,I decided to write down a few pieces of wisdom about what I know at this venerable age. First is:
PERSEVERANCE – Never, never, never, never, never give in. Winston Churchill said this first, not me, and it’s true. The only way I’ve gotten a lot of things in life is that I plugged and plugged away. I’ve had TWO books that both went through more than 30 rejections from various publishers before they were picked up by actual publishing houses instead of vanity or self-publishers. One came out in 2009 and the second is coming out this fall (University of Tennessee Press, everyone!). Then I had a children’s book that came out in 1998, then was taken out of print two years later even though it was still selling. The publisher sat on the rights to the illustrations for 10 years. I never gave up bugging them about this until finally a new set of executives was hired and they gave me the rights in 2010. It went back into print in 2011.

This is a hike I dragged Veeka on that’s near Stevens Pass in the Cascades. We were on our way back from Barclay Lake.

TRAVEL – When flying somewhere for an event, always plan to arrive a day early. Airlines these days are so messed up, it’s easy to get bumped and marooned overnight if not longer. Had I not followed this advice last summer, I would have missed a friend’s wedding in Montreal. We were flying there via Washington DC when thunderstorms hit while we were changing flights at Dulles. (Note: Never fly through any East Coast city in the afternoon during the summer thunderstorm season, which lasts about 3 months. The humidity brings in the thunderheads and it’s good-bye to flying anywhere that day.) Anyway, all East Coast airports shut down and we were stuck. United put us on an early flight out the next day, then that got cancelled. Fortunately, they put on an extra plane and got a bunch of us up to Canada in time.
YOU CAN GIVE UP COFFEE – Recently, I decided to get serious about losing some weight I’ve gained in recent years and went on a diet that forbids one to drink coffee on the grounds that coffee is a toxin that compromises the liver’s ability to burn fat and thus the liver stores the fat around your middle. I’ve been on this diet off and on since 2012 (when I lost a ton of weight on it), so starting June 1, I went off the java. After the first few days, I have begun to do very well w/o caffeine. I almost have more energy than I used to and yes, the pounds are coming off. I know many people feel they can’t give up caffeine but it is possible.
I’ve gotten a few things published recently, including this piece on traveling the AlCan with kids, which appeared in AAA’s Journey magazine. Also, there’s another travel piece on Barkerville, a historic town in central British Columbia that I wrote for ParentMap, a local web site with amazing ideas of things to do with kids. Journey just came out with another piece of mine but alas, I don’t have the link for it. Here’s another link that shows a portfolio of my work in a very attractive layout. And lastly, here is the first mention of my upcoming book from Inside Higher Ed.com.

This is a buddy bumper ball that we discovered during Duvall Days.

We’ve done lots of local travel like a lovely fair in Duvall that Veeka and I went to one Saturday where she ended up wrapped in this huge plastic ball – called a buddy bumper ball – which apparently is the rage these days. It’s fun watching kids bang into each other, then bounce helplessly across the grass. After that, we went for dinner at the home of a Lewis & Clark alum who lives in the middle of the wilderness in a gorgeous home overlooking the Tolt River. She’s selling it for $1.3 million. Then I got a pair of hiking boots for my birthday, which means I can drag Veeka on more treks in the mountains. And the 80-year-old bed she had been using (that was used by my mom when she was a kid) broke recently, so Veeka got a lovely PINK bunk bed that some saintly friends helped us assemble.

On a sadder note, today is the first anniversary of my father’s death, which was June 24 last year. We still miss him very much and Veeka keeps on saying that she always expects him to be sitting in his rocking chair when she comes through the door. It was odd last week when it was Father’s Day and for the first time in my life, my dad was not here. And it feels that a piece of our lives will always be missing. My mom had not traveled at all since he died, which is why, over Mother’s Day weekend, I took her on a ferry to Sequim (on the Olympic peninsula), to see the new home that my brother Rob and his wife, Jan, live in. Seems amazing that seven years ago, Rob and I were both living in Maryland and, by circuitous routes, we both came back to the Pacific Northwest. It also feels odd that we are well past the middle of the second decade of this century. I remember thinking forward to what the year 2000 would be like and now we’re 17 years past that.

Veeka is just about ready to blow out the candles on her cake. To her left is Wyatt, the son of her cousin Lindsay.

I was agonizing over just how to celebrate Veeka’s 12 birthday and in the end, it all came together. Her birthday was on Easter day. So I took 40 pink-icing cupcakes (with red “V’s” added for you-know-who) to her Sunday school class, which sang “happy birthday” to her and helped eat the food; then we drove to Oma’s where we had a nice Easter banquet with more family members there. Veeka delighted in her gifts, which included lots of clothes because she’s growing so fast and constantly grows out of stuff. So I make good use of the Hannah Andersson outlet north of us in Woodinville.
Her day was a bright spot in a gloomy spring, weather-wise, that has become infamous for setting a record in rainfall. Just today (April 24), we broke a 122-year record for rainfall and believe me, it’s truly felt like we’ve been in a monsoon since last summer. Easter weekend was the first rain-less weekend since September. So it’s been tough to get

My little hiker with Opa’s old walking stick and a new bun in her hair.

out. Not that we haven’t tried. Just last Friday, we hiked a seven-mile round trip slog up nearby Squak mountain that ended up in a magnificent view of Mt. Rainier during the prettiest and sunniest day we’ve had in eons. V had put up her hair in a bun, as she’s getting into hair styling these days and disocovering what fun it is. But it was row after row of switchbacks that took nearly two hours each way, and in the end it was Veeka helping me the last few hundred feet. I had worn the wrong shoes and my feet were getting blisters. Need to invest in hiking boots!
Other outings have been inbetween rain showers. During spring break, we visited the tulip gardens up in Skagit Valley (about 90 minutes north of us) but even they were soggy from all the water. We then drove through La Conner, a cute town that I had last seen as a high school student, then whipped by Deception Pass State Park, a pretty spot on the Sound that is packed during the summer.
We did get to go skiing one more, this time an early April visit to Mission Ridge in Wenatchee (in central Washington), which was sunny in ways the west side of the mountains was not. Mission Ridge was offering free lessons to fifth graders, so of course we HAD to take advantage of that. It was icy or slushy skiing for me but Veeka sailed through her ski lesson and the instructor said she was ready to get on a chair. So next year, I’ll be on the lookout for a series of

At Mission Ridge: Veeka poses with her instructor before a 2-hour lesson.

lessons. We get up so early on weekday mornings that I don’t have the heart to drag her up on Saturdays for the ski bus to Snoqualmie Pass, but there must be another way. She definitely prefers downhill to cross country.
The cherry blossoms have been out with a vengeance this spring, so we dropped by the Quad at the University of Washington, where there were lots of blooming pink creations surrounded by tons of people with cameras. And this was on a weekday, albeit one without rain. We were near the UW

Me and the blossoms on the University of Washington quad.

because Veeka was in the neighborhood for a braces appointment. Many thanks to those who’ve boosted the GoFundMe to $3,350 to date and believe me, that money will be spent. A few weeks later, we went to Portland where I showed her my alma mater, Lewis & Clark, which has expanded quite a bit since I was there in the 70s. Veeka says she hopes to attend the UW and I tell her that her academics need to improve a lot more before that happens. Otherwise, things have been quiet. We tried a visit to Seattle’s Chinatown several weeks ago but only got to a few sites because of the unrelenting downpour that day. Am so hoping sunnier days will arrive soon.

It’s already March; we’re switching back to daylight savings time this coming weekend and the GoFundMe campaign for Veeka’s braces is at an even $3,000, thanks to many people. More is needed, but Veeka’s had her first orthodontist appointment at the University of Washington dental school mainly so they can assess what she needs. I’ve already had other private orthodontists do that, but most of them charged way more and the UW likes having their students do their own assessments. So there we are.
The biggest thing we’ve done in recent weeks is travel to north across the border to Vancouver Island, where I had a travel assignment for a piece on the Mt. Washington Alpine Resort about 70 miles north of Nanaimo. The tourism bureau picked up a lot of our expenses (that’s the beauty of travel writing) so we could sample the slopes. Anyone who’s been watching the weather out here knows the West Coast has gotten a ton of snow this winter, so the skiing is pretty nice. We stayed in the town of Courtenay where there were lots of decent restaurants and less snow. A few days before we left, I discovered the Veeka had outgrown all her snow wear, so we found a very nice consignment shop in Courtenay called the Blue Toque where we loaded up on some boots, snow pants and a cheap pair of cross-country skiis for me. The U.S. dollar goes far in Canada, so why not?

Just north of Goose Spit Park is a long staircase that people climb for good views. Here’s what we saw.

We did tubing the first day, I tried some cross-country ski trails the second and Veeka took her first downhill lesson on our last day there. She learned how to do a basic snow plow and discovered she really LIKES doing downhill as opposed to cross-country (which she picked up in Fairbanks). Am hoping I can get her into some more lessons. We also visited some local parks, a place called Morningstar Farm and Little Qualicum Cheeseworks, which not surprisingly is a dairy farm that produces lots of cheese. That region is truly ski-to-sea, as we were on the slopes in the morning and in the afternoon wandering about some of the beaches on the Georgia Strait. A beach area called Goose Spit Park in nearby Comox was particularly beautiful. There was tons of driftwood and many lovely places to sit and gaze on the mountains and water. One morning when we were eating breakfast in a
Meanwhile, preparations for my upcoming book continue. Last Sunday, I spoke to a group of Lewis & Clark College alumni about In the House of the Serpent Handler: A Story of Faith and Fleeting Fame

in the Age of Social Media and showed them some videos of serpent handlers. Peoples’ mouths always drop open when they see that stuff and I realize how fortunate I was to have a front row seat into that culture for 3 years.
And Veeka pulled off a minor triumph this year in that she sold 132 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the past two weeks. For reasons beyond our control, she wasn’t able to start selling until two weeks ago after most of the girls had wrapped up their door-to-door sales. I don’t have a workplace where I can twist peoples’ arms to buy cookies and Veeka’s school won’t let her sell to employees there. A lot of girls have their parents sell tons of boxes for them! But other than a few orders from family, all our sales were from schlepping from door to door within a half-mile of where we live. Some of those apartment complexes

Veeka presenting cookie choices to a customer.

were a bit dicey but even in the strangest places we found buyers. Will say that the past two years, the weather has been simply dreadful every time we’ve schlepped around the neighborhood. Nothing like dodging puddles. Her last year total was 50 boxes but this year, she was quite the pro, walking up to peoples’ doors and giving them the spiel. Starting this month, she’ll be sitting in front of supermarkets helping the Scouts sell cookies to all the foot traffic. We did all this last year so it won’t be completely new. Other than that, I just marked my second anniversary (March 1) writing for the GetReligion.org blog, for which I’m now doing 13 blogs/month. That amount increased from 11 last December. There are a few other things bubbling away that I hope to write about soon, if they turn out. I’m still subbing two days a week for the Issaquah School District and all of that in elementary schools. Being there gives me a whole new respect for teachers plus I’ve gotten lots of colds this year. Wonder why?

The past six weeks have been one deadline after another, which is my poor excuse for not blogging. I will say that my GoFundMe total is just over $2,000 although it doesn’t look that way on the GFM site. But kind individuals have privately sent contributions (that don’t get 7% taken off of them as happens on the site), so I have enough money – 25% of the total – to at least get started. Thank you, all.

Veeka relaxing in her new mermaid-shaped blanket she got for Christmas.

During the past two months, I’ve been substituting at local schools twice a week. Recently, I was teaching a class on primes and Eratosthenes’ sieve. The weird phrases kids have to muddle through with this Common Core curriculum include “identify the factors and product represented in an array” and “solve using the standard algorithm or the distributive property with a number band.” This was for FOURTH grade.
Christmas and New Year’s here was quiet; the first time my father has not been with us. This has been my grimmest year in terms of deaths of friends and acquaintances. Including my dad, there were six. One friend was 43 and two were in their 50s. All had cancer. An old friend from my Portland community days died at the age of 69. My mother keeps on saying that I’m at the age where my friends will start to die and sadly, she’s right.
I am in an à la recherché du temps perdu mood these days. Saw two interesting articles in the Seattle Times about why the natives are moving out and WHY the natives are fleeing. The comment sections in both are worth working through as many of them identify feelings I’ve been having for the past year re Seattle being not the place I once knew. One person talked about moving to the area in the late 1970s, renting an apartment for $220/month and there only being two rush hours. Serious crime was rare, people were friendly and there were actually Republicans (albeit moderates) in office. Sales tax was 5.4 percent.

This Flickr photo by Robert Martin shows the annual Christmas tree lights atop the Space Needle.

Now….(and I quote the writer) you have traffic standstills at all hours in both directions, a U district to University Place drive in rush hour is way past 2 hours, drivers are rude, the sales tax has almost doubled and yet the services are no better. Politically, there is no opposition to one-party rule, political correctness has bred an arrogance, the friendly underbelly of the area has gone, crime is up, the gas tax has now about the highest in the nation but the roads are not equivalent to the price we pay, homelessness is accepted as a God-given right, no thought is given to how plan for growth (just throw up condos and the city collects more tax money), and yes, there is a bigoted side of the far left “progressives” that now inhabit King County at a far greater rate than they used to. There is vile hatred of any non-far left viewpoint. There is no such thing as a “mainstream’ democrat like Scoop Jackson left.
I have to agree. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in DC, although at least there, people dressed nicely! One thing I did do recently was attend a banquet where Mike Huckabee was speaking. Someone gave me a free night of babysitting and told me to find an event to attend, so I heard of this pro-life dinner downtown. Huckabee was cool and he opened with saying he was bringing “a huge welcome from the basket of deplorables in the Midwest.” We all laughed ruefully. He brought up the “child is just an extension of the mother” argument that one hears from organizations like Planned Parenthood. But if that were true, he said, wouldn’t it always have the same DNA and blood type? (Of course we know that children have different blood types. I’m an O-, which neither of my parents are. Blood banks like me because O- is the universal donor and only 9% of the population has it.)

Mike Huckabee at the pro-life dinner in downtown Seattle.

Anyway, it was an interesting crowd and filled with the sort of folks one doesn’t ordinarily run into in this area. One of the speakers asked if there were any elected officials present. Seeing no one raise a hand, he said, “It takes real courage to run for office as a pro-lifer in the Sodom and Gomorrah that is the Pacific Northwest.” There are other places I’d apply the S&G label to faster than Seattle and Portland but it was nice to encounter people who are at least aware of local issues and politics.
I am still going through my scrapbooks and running across memories from high school in the halcyon Seattle of the mid-70s. When I was a senior, I organized Redmond High School’s first road rally, which amazingly got tons of students, faculty and local merchants involved. We even got a write-up in the local paper and even though it was raining heavily, 45 participants helped us raise $100 for the senior class (which was big money in those days). It took place on Oct. 6, 1973, and I plotted out the entire 33-mile route. Not bad, considering my parents wouldn’t let me drive until I was 17.
When my brother Rob accompanied me at one point, we got into a car accident on Avondale Road. (He didn’t see the stop sign, which WAS hidden). I came across a sheet of committee assignments that I’d typed up and I must say, I’m still impressed by my organizational gifts that were just starting to blossom. The road rally stunt helped get me chosen as Girl of the Month by the local Kiwanis.

Veeka strikes a pose while at the annual Christmas lights display at Warm Beach. It was in the 20ºFs, so we didn’t last long.

I also found photos from the July 1973 bicycle trip I took (with 32 other kids) that was sponsored by two Evangelical Covenant churches: Newport and Highland, both in Bellevue. We rode some 220 miles, with stops in Monroe, Lake Stevens, Mt. Vernon, La Conner, then to the Anacortes ferry which we took for 2 days of R&R on Lopez Island. Then took the ferry to Whidbey Island where we stayed at Fort Casey (which is filled with lots of World War II bunkers). Then rode to the Mulkiteo ferry, which we took back to the mainland. Spent the night in Everett, then biked home that afternoon. We appeared (and stayed at) Covenant churches and campgrounds along the way. A magazine article I wrote about the trip for the Covenant Companion was my first published piece. That experience got me started on long-distance biking. The following summer, I biked with that same group to Victoria (BC) and a few years later, I was with a group that biked 800 miles from Washington, DC to Lexington, Ky., for the Bicentennial.
In high school, we had just moved to Seattle from Maryland, where there was so much social ferment. It even affected the Episcopal church we attended in Severna Park, which was close to Annapolis. I found a letter in the scrapbooks from a friend explaining she had left St. Martins (as had numerous other families) because of its emphasis on politics. The Episcopal church got really into the anti-war movement during that time period. What they missed was the burgeoning Jesus movement that was also happening. I returned to that church when I was a junior in high school and challenged the priest as to why, after 5 years there, I had not heard about the Jesus I encountered later in Young Life at Redmond High School. He felt the message had been there but I had not heard it. I didn’t challenge him at the time, but actually, the message wasn’t there. My scrapbook was filled with all the Young Life notices that I designed and helped pass out to other students.
Every so often I return to that world. There was a place out Union Hill Road that we called “Lewises” that had these wonderful Saturday night prayer meetings that everyone went to in the 70s. Tom and Gay Lewis, the couple who founded it, now have Thursday night meetings at their place, which Veeka and I have occasionally attended. They have lovely potlucks beforehand and the property is on a wonderful patch of woods that Veeka loves to wander around, provided she doesn’t encounter the local panther who prowls about. Other than the Lewises themselves, none of my old friends are there. I’ve had to make new friends during our now 17 months here and I can count them on the fingers of one hand. I drive along the freeways here and am so happy to see mountain ranges. And it is so nice to be close to family after 30+ years of living elsewhere. But if I want to be near good friends, I have to drive to Portland. But it beats flying there, as I used to have to do.

Dressed in her Halloween best, Veeka vamps it up a bit with her candy around her. She did learn one does not trick or treat in heels.

I’m happy to say that a GoFundMe campaign I started a few weeks ago to raise funds for Veeka’s braces-to-come has brought in $1,100. The bad news: I have another $5-$6K to go! I really didn’t want to go this route, but after being unemployed for more than 18 months (other than freelance and substitute teaching gigs), desperate times call for desperate measures. Because of a tooth that is ravaging her gums, she not only has to have braces, but also some minor surgery to get that tooth back into position. Sigh. My health insurance – which goes up 25% in 2017 – only pays for braces for medical reasons, ie birth defects.
And so I’ve told friends that I need to raise at least $2,000 to call up the orthodontist and sign the contract for two years of braces. I realize that not all can or feel led to give, but if you do, feel free to click on the above link. As I’ve been agonizing over which health insurance to choose for 2017, I am trying to squelch feelings of panic at the thought of the incoming presidential administration doing away with Obamacare. On the other hand, it feels as though insurance companies have already abandoned it, as they are getting queasier and queasier about covering anything.
Meanwhile, the rich keep on getting richer in Seattle. The median income here is now $80K.
I wonder: How many of those people with supposedly higher salaries are over 50? That’s where the real unemployment is. Past a certain age, it’s impossible to get a 9-5 job that pays more than $15/hour. Try living on that.

Veeka also got new glasses this fall because we’ve discovered she is farsighted.

Or, $20/hour is what local school districts pay emergency subs, which is a good way to pick up some money if you have a degree but no teaching certificate. That’s what I’m doing two days a week, but compared to what I used to make, it isn’t much, folks. Even full-time public school teachers often only make in the $40s around here. That’s nuts.
As many of you know, one of the many ways I eke out a living is to do freelance writing. I was on a conference call today (Dec. 12) with a group of other religion reporters and we were talking about how tough it is to sell your pieces for good money.
Try getting paid more than, say, $300, max $400 for a 1,200-word story. That’s about 30-40 cents a word. (The decent pay is $1/word for those of you not in the know.) I’ve been amazed at the low rates publications in the Seattle area pay people, considering the expense of living here.
Nevertheless, I’ve come out with three pieces since I last blogged. This piece on Jim Eichner, a local Episcopal priest who runs a food bank, came out in the November issue of 425, a magazine for Seattle’s Eastside. Yes, Jim is the same priest who was at my dad’s bed side right before he died. Then, the Washington Post ran two of my travel pieces two weekends in a row. This piece on cross-country skiing in the Methow Valley ran the weekend of Nov. 11 and my grand-circle-around-British-Columbia piece ran the following weekend. So…I am selling more travel than religion pieces.

Veeka and her little first-cousin-once-removed Wyatt at Oma’s.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of articles out there about house prices that continue to soar.
In late October, my brother Rob and his wife, Jan, moved from Maryland to Washington, choosing to settle somewhere on the Kitsap peninsula where the weather is a lot better than here! They chose a place in the fast-growing retirement haven of Sequim, and managed to grab a place that’s being built now. They felt lucky to get that. Nearly everyone I know is renting. No one can afford to buy. Well, I do have a friend who just bought a townhome near me and he paid a cool half a million to get it. Maybe the top 1% is doing well here, but there’s a lot of us who aren’t.
It’s been a quiet fall for us, with just one trip out of town to Portland to attend a banquet for Good Samaritan Ministries on Nov. 5. Veeka has started fifth grade and we squeezed in after-school hikes and swims in local lakes before the weather went south on us. And it looks like it’s going to be another record breaker for rain this season. While Alaska enjoys almost historically warm temps, we’ve had record-breaking rainfall. Veeka and I grimly joke that we’re both gaining weight because we get no exercise on the weekends because it’s always a.) raining and b.) cold.

Right off the TV screen: Election night 2016

As for other things: The election? Totally shocked, as everyone else was. I’m in the weird place of being glad Hillary lost but not overjoyed that Trump won, especially since he looks to be trying to dismantle half the federal agencies in one swoop. He’ll have one enemy in me if he touches healthcare. I will say I was beyond amused at the stunned looks on many of the TV anchors’ faces as the returns came in and it was clear that Hillary was not sweeping the country – or the Electoral College – as we thought would happen. So many in the media totally misread the mood of the country. I wish I could say that, one month later, I see a difference in coverage but I don’t. I mean, you have New York Times editor Dean Baquet saying they need to cover religion far more than they do. Well, no kidding. But until I see the want ads go up for an extra handful of religion reporters at the Times, I won’t believe a word he says. I heard similar breast beating back in 2004 when George Bush beat John Kerry and everyone wondered what hole those Protestant evangelicals had crawled out of. In December 2004, I wrote a column for Poynter.org using “It’s the hiring, stupid,” instead of the better-known saying “It’s the economy, stupid,” to point out that media organizations have been stinting on good religion coverage for a long time. I named names, calling out specific newspapers that had either left the beat empty or hired ingénues for the beat instead of seasoned reporters, making for some pretty clueless stories. Meanwhile, they scoured the country to hire for beats they considered more important like health, tech and real estate. So, of course they miss what’s really going on by a mile.

Veeka (left) and her cabin mates at a Girl Scout camp she attended this summer in Carnation, Wash.

We were supposed to be gone on a Girl Scout camping weekend today, but there’s been dire warnings about some huge typhoon hitting the Seattle area this weekend, so all sorts of things have been cancelled around the region, including our camp. Which is OK, in that it’s been raining all day and there’s nothing more miserable than tromping around a campground in the rain. So our major outing today was to Home Depot and Value Village. That said, there hasn’t been that much wind here at all so far.
Things have quieted down a bit with Veeka back in school. Last weekend, I was at a conference of regional journalism professors in Tacoma. I’m pleased to say I’m about to sign a contract for my 6th book and am spending most of this month working full time finishing up the manuscript. (More on this later when the contract is signed.) I’ve been doing some emergency substituting in local elementary schools and it’s not been bad at all, although I am exhausted when I get home.
My father’s 92nd birthday was Sept. 26, so I brought a white rose by my mother’s place. A year ago, we had a quiet dinner together. He’s been gone more than 3 months now and it will be so odd having the holidays in another month without him.
Since the place I live in is so tiny, I’ve been going through lots of boxes and tossing things that have been around more than 45 years. These include my scrapbooks as a young girl. When I was 7, the first big news event of 1963 wasn’t the death of President Kennedy but, as noted in my scrapbook, the death of Pope John Paul XXIII on June 3, several months before. I still remember the former. I was walking home from school one fall day (everyone always walked at least a mile to school in those days) and some kid rode by on his bike to say the president was dead. I didn’t believe it until I got home and saw it on the TV.

A rose for my father’s 92nd birthday

My scrapbook from that year is filled with photos of brides and many drawings of birds. I loved going into the woods and drawing what was available in coastal Connecticut: towhees, blue jays, hummingbirds, goldfinches, scarlet tanagers, orioles, blue birds, pine warblers and red-winged blackbirds. Sadly, there are a lot fewer of these songbirds in the world today.
In the next scrapbook, from 1964, I found a small notebook of photos of students from my first-grade class. Amazingly, I could remember all of their first names and some of their last names. More than 50 years later, I remember names like Fay Steinhilber, Elizabeth Percy, Pam Van Ness, Melanie Carpenter, Roberta Samuels, Candy Simone, Robert Wallace, Debra Acara and Colleen Dougherty. Isn’t it odd how they stay with you? I still remember my teachers from Great Neck Elementary in Waterford: Mrs. Lyons (first grade); Mrs. Orsey (2nd), Mrs. Edgecomb (third) and then in Severna Park: Mrs. Fudjack (5th), Mr. Smith (6th) and Mrs. Taylor (7th). The name of my 4th grade teacher escapes me…
I saved tons of Valentines and birthday cards and it amazes me how all my aunts sent me cards and my maternal grandmother, Olive, would write me letters. And I was only 8! Everyone sent so many letters and cards back then. I even got a birthday card from Poodie, my grandfather’s dog. There are also letters from my first penpal (a girl in Sidney, Montana called Colleen Jensen). Those were the years when we first started using zip codes.

Veeka at a park in Bothell

Every so often, I like to pinpoint some fascinating books I’ve run across and that I had time to read this summer: One is Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia,” a fascinating look into one of the world’s most polluted cities because of all the nuclear waste in the area’s rivers and air. The major city in the area is Chelyabinsk, a city not far from Kostanai, the Kazakh city where I spent 6 weeks adopting Veeka. Folks I met in Kostanai told me that Chelyabinsk was the largest city within a day’s drive and they would visit it ever so often. You may have heard of the city when a meteor fell near it in 2013. The reporter, who had been in and out of Chelyabinsk for 40 years, gives an amazing profile of a Russian region where media rarely visit. It used to be a “closed” area because of all the plutonium plants in the area. She writes a devastating portrayal of how Russians live and believe outside of the famous cities to the west. In Chelyabinsk, anyone in power is corrupt, all the officials are on the take and if you don’t toe the line, local Putin appointees will see you go bankrupt. Depressing, but a great read, as it shows how hopeless the residents feel over a situation that will not get better.

My mom got honored at St. Mark’s Cathedral in September for overseeing a massive needlework project to cover all the cushions in the cathedral chapel.

Another was The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. I’m fascinated but repulsed by these creatures; it’s hard for me to even look at them. They’ve got the worst of all worlds: a loathsome-looking head attached to tentacles. But this author talks about how she got to know successive octopuses at the New England Aquarium in Boston and how these creatures get to know humans by touch. They can feel your emotions through your skin, so if an octopus wraps one arm/leg around you, it’s sensing the chemicals in your body, plus it can tell whether you are male or female. The writer talks about them having memory and dreams, how they can be lonely and desire human company and how she learned how to pet them and communicate love to them and how the octopus responded back. If you see Hank the Octopus in the new Finding Dory movie, you realize how they can change color in quite amazing ways to blend in with their surroundings.

This place is Rattlesnake Ledge and that’s Veeka sitting by the remains of our picnic dinner after we hiked up. There are sheer drops off the ledge so naturally I didn’t let her go close to the edge.

I have also been reading “The Rope,” a recent book by Kanan Makiya, written from the viewpoint of a young Shi’ite revolutionary from 2003 to the death of Saddam Hussein in 2006. He lays the blame for the ruin of present-day Iraq not at the feet of the Americans – who despite their faults gave Iraq its best shot ever at establishing a democracy – but at the feet of the majority Shi’ites who could not see beyond their partisan politics to want to build a united Iraq. He points out the lying and betrayal is the local currency in Iraq and that absolutely no one is to be trusted, not even your own kin, as the hero discovers at the end of the book. Thus, a Jean-Jacques Rousseau-style social contract was rejected and replaced by a social where there is no trust in anything; where you never know if the person next to you is a suicide bomber intent on blowing you up. And you can’t have a functioning society without some trust.

The book is an easy read and I found the author’s unveiling of the nature of the Arab tribal mindset fascinating. So much of this inborn resistance goes back to Ishmael and the enmity between him and Isaac that never got resolved. I visited Iraq, albeit the Kurdish part of it, in 2004, so have been fascinated by it ever since. That said, it’s a most desolate piece of real estate I’ve ever seen. BTW, the speech Saddam gives at the end of the book is amazing.

Veeka and a friend at the Washington state fair in Puyallup.

I’ve also been reading “American Wife,” by Curtis Sittenfeld, a fictionalized account of the life of Laura Bush. The author tries to get inside the head (and thoughts) of a First Lady and does a good job at guessing what it must be like to be a public figure. What I found fascinating was the character’s interior monologues about fame and power and whether being the wife of the President makes her complicit in his good – and bad – decisions. Is she responsible, she wonders, for the deaths of many Americans and even more Iraqis in the war in Iraq? When people beg her to try to change her husband’s mind on certain topics, she reasons that hers is not a Hillary-and-Bill-Clinton marriage where one got two for the price of one. So, she doesn’t try to influence her husband. Various reviewers found fault with the book but I liked it enough to continue to the end.

During my Canada trip, I also read Sittenfeld’s latest, which is “Eligible,” It’s a take-off on Jane Austen and what “Pride and Prejudice” would look like if moved to the 21st century. It’s pretty funny and very easy reading. This book was about five unmarried daughters and how four of them ended up with spouses within a year. The end wrapped up a bit too quickly to be real but there were so really profound parts as well and it’s definitely the thing to take along for easy reading.